My story

I started programming when I was 11 years old on Commodore Plus 4 and Commodore 64. Programming in Basic was a bit too boring for me, so I started learning machine-level programming. The need to understand everything as deeply as possible become an everlasting habit of mine.

In secondary school, I acquired electronic technician skills. I ate, breathed, and slept designing and building circuits.

After 5 years I graduated as an Electrical Engineer from the Technical University of Budapest in 1999. My MSc theme was Computer Systems and Applications. My thesis was on Windows Security Programming.

In the last two years of my engineering study (1998-99), I started working part-time as a Systems Engineer, and then as a Programmer. I took several Microsoft Certified Professional exams at this time, and as soon as I finished the University, I became a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

I quickly realized that software development is much more enjoyable than designing an Active Directory system (for me). After more studying, I became a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, and Microsoft Certified Database Administrator.

In 2000 I joined a Microsoft Certified Training Center. .NET 1.0 was in the beta phase, and Microsoft had asked me to write some articles about the upcoming new language: C#. I have been involved in .NET since the birth of the platform.

In the next 7 years, I delivered .NET and SQL Server training to several hundred students. I have also created and taught my course about Design Patterns adapted to .NET. The training earned my reputation as someone knowledgeable about .NET, OOP Design, and SQL Server and allowed me to pursue my consulting journey. There were several local Microsoft conferences where I presented about hot .NET topics.

In 2003 I was awarded a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in ASP.NET. Later, I then became SQL Server MVP util 2010 (Unfortunately I did not have enough time to support the community since then).

In 2006 I decided to take a break from training because as it was a very demanding business. I joined a company writing low-level C++ code for Internet Explorer. It was a very different endeavor compared to my earlier days, but a welcomed diversification.

In 2009 I became a freelance consultant. Great timing during a recession. :).

In recent times I have created and delivered 4 new courses to my clients:

Refactoring and Test Driven Development for .NET

Refactoring and Test Driven Development for C++

C# from A to Z

Entity Framework Programming

Optimizing SQL Server Queries

Since 2009 I worked for many companies helping them to:

• Creating architecture prototypes
• Tuning SQL Queries
• Optimizing .NET code performance
• Troubleshooting SQL Server blocking and deadlocking
• Creating C# Roslyn-based refactoring tool
• Troubleshooting Web Server crashes via Memory Dump analysis
• Finding memory leaks in Web Apps
• Investigating excess memory usage for Desktop Applications
• Phasing out legacy WCF code
• Introducing more loosely coupled design into legacy applications
• Refactoring legacy code to allow unit testing
• Migrating WCF code to gRCP
• Replacing legacy Dependency Injection Framework (Unity) to Autofac
• Migrating from Entity Framework Classic to EF core
• Tuning EF Core querying

You can check my MCP history. Transcript ID 681053 Access Code: alma1234

For easier access, here is my MCP history from the link. Charter means I took the beta version of the exam when no one has seen it yet, so any cheating is excluded.

Microsoft Certification ID: 1266303
ZSOLT SOCZO